Hi everyone,

I am new to this forum. I decided to reach for help over the internet because I am now at a crossroad of my life where if I don’t stop taking the wrong decisions, I don’t know if will overcome the consequences again.

I am a 37 Arab woman married to 29 French man. Our relationship is 2,5 years old, full of very difficult moments. I a what some would call a Muslim, in reality I feel more like a believer taking what makes me feel good from religion and questioning the rest.
My husband is so different from me, some would never believe we managed to be together. Coming from a non open minded family, angry against any kind of religion, and even angry against God.

When we met, he was someone loving to party, drinking, extroverted, having no limit. I was a woman who suffered from past relationships with men who made me feel like crap, one of it ended with hate and abortion, another one ended with me crying and beating my face in the dark as I hated myself so much being with a married man who made me feel like his slave (even sexually). I was an introvert trying my best to be wise without being anti social, hating alcohol for what it did to my uncle. But I loved him. I loved to talk to him for hours about every thing. I was trying to be open minded, and I ended up telling myself why not. We always look for partners like us, but when we hang out with people we don’t agree with, they help us and we help them. So I told him what I felt for him. He rejected the idea of us being together at first because of his non open minded family and the cliché of the Arabic family too present. After a few months he finally said we could give it a try.

The relationship was difficult. I always felt I was not enough. Not enough integrated, not even ready for sacrifice, not enough socializing, not enough extroverted. I felt my beliefs was bothering him, as well as my culture. So many times, I tried to stop the relationship, afraid it would be a failure like the other ones. But he always came in the way to stop me from doing it.

We went on, got married, moved together, kept our families away from each other. My parents never asked to meet them, knowing his parents would be scared to see their son being married to a Muslim family, and my husband always kept the mistery about how my family is.

Our arguing was always there, at least every 3 weeks. About how he was trying to hide his alcohol consumption to me, about I he would look down on my culture and beliefs, about how it was not the life he wanted to have a woman refusing to wear a swimming suit, about how I was always looking at the solution of ending the relation when I saw no way out of our problems.

One day I decided it was our last try : a couple therapy. I pushed him, he was not convinced. For him I had a problem and I needed therapy. But he had nothing to solve. So I paid for it. And as incredible as it is, no more problems. No more looking down on my culture, and no more giving importance to his small lies about alcohol. Did we solve the problem or did we just learn to lie to ourselves and act like it was ok? I don’t know. But we started our life project.

I started thinking we could have a child together when before I used to feel he would never consider me as a legitimate mother. I started thinking about buying a house. And we launched both projects at the same time.

The beginning of my pregnancy was psychologically difficult. I was feeling sick regularly and I felt no compassion from him. I felt I was doing all the job and had just someone in front of me telling me things like « it’s a pregnancy, not a desease », « you’re doing better than many women ». After 2 months I had my first ultrasound, everything was ok. And the ultrasound of 3 months, the nightmare started, Down syndrome suspected with heart malformation. At that time he just gave me up at the middle of the appointment. I found him back outside on his phone texting his family telling them how horrible it was. The diagnoses was confirmed after a while.

The news was so hard, for the first time of my life, I thought I would not be tough enough to overcome this. I tried to rely on him, but he just did not have the reaction I needed. Didn’t want to take position and what we should do, go on with the pregnancy or not. He tried the escape the discussion about it. I felt so abandoned. We finally decided to stop the pregnancy. After that, I accepted the therapy purposed at the hospital. The doctor almost did not speak but just left me speaking. And the truth came out. I am always lying to myself, acting like everything is ok when it’s not. I don’t feel I have the right to be angry against people who hurt me in the most horrible moment of my life. But he left me and ran to his family. He even took advantage of the time I was sleeping at the hospital to go back home and see his father until he missed the delivery. We had to lie to his family about obsequies we didn’t do. We had to invent a name for his mother to organise a mass. When did people think about my grief ?

At at the same time, we moved to the new house we bought together.

Now I try to stop lying to myself. All my life, all my mistakes, bad choices, suffering came from these lies. And it’s not easy to look at the truth.

It’s been 2,5 month since I gave birth to my dead daughter. I just stopped bleeding. And now I have to decide wether I want or not to try again. Was it really a good idea ? I feel a terrible loss and terrible emptiness. It’s like even my body was not ready for this. And I look at other people having children telling myself « how lucky they are », « I wish I had one of mine too ».

But it seems to me I lied to myself about my husband. I am now staring directly towards the truth, and I don’t trust him for being the father I want for my child. He is fleeing from my culture, from my family, from my beliefs. And he is not respecting it more than before. He is not even respecting me more than before. He’s just living. Will he really let me give an education to my Child ? Is he still considering me as a woman incapable of giving and education to a child and just not saying it anymore ?

I must make the right choice now. Because I will not handle another grief like this. I must stop lying to myself. I am now wondering, is it ok if I have a child even i know I will be at war with his father and finally leave him ? Or am I just blinded because I want to have the little beautiful daughter I was about to have ? Maybe I am scared of the futur and try to flee from it. And by this I look again at everything which is going wrong ? Or I a really on the wrong way one again ?

I would have closed my eyes and lied to myself like always, saying it can work. But this time it’s different. The last grief I had is very very far from I ever imagined. And coming from a family where we learn not to cry when we want to and look like tough when we are down on the floor, I never got in front of a mountain where I would tell myself « i am not going to make it alive » except this time.

Sorry for this long story and thank you if you took time from your life to read it. It might help me to have some outside advices.

Best wishes.